


Work It Out

by FalsettoFetish



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Infidelity, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:48:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22823566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalsettoFetish/pseuds/FalsettoFetish
Summary: The night before their second attempt at Nott's transformation, Nott and Caleb have a heart-to-heart.Set in the vague but not-so-distant future sometime after episode 95.
Relationships: Nott/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 6
Kudos: 98





	Work It Out

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to grave_remarks for beta and cheerleading!

“Cay?” Nott calls out. Caleb turns back to look at her in the doorway. “Would you stay here with me tonight?”

“Of course.”

Caleb follows her into the room and shuts the door behind them, then starts running the silver thread across the doorway, muttering arcane words, the same familiar routine as hundreds of nights before. She settles on the bed and waits for him to finish setting up his alarms. He sits down across from her, cross-legged on the bed.

“Are you worried about tomorrow?” he asks gently.

“Of course I am.”

“I know it didn’t work the last time, but I think it will work this time.” He has that gleam in his eye that he only gets when he’s talking about really complicated magic. “And if it doesn’t, we will find another way. We will keep looking until we fix it.”

“I know you will,” Nott says. “And that’s not why I’m worried. I’m not worried about you, Caleb, I’m worried about me.”

He reaches out and squeezes her knee gently. “I promise you will be safe.”

“I know that, too. I’m just not sure  _ who _ I’ll be. I mean, I used to be this other person, and then I became who I am now, and I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, if I’ll go back to being exactly like I was before. I mean, I never used to steal things, or eat rats. I don’t know how much of who I am is  _ me _ and how much is this body. 

“We have a plan! I’m going to stay with you all through the negotiations, and TravelerCon, and … What if I wake up tomorrow and all I want is to go back to my husband and son?”

“Isn’t that what you want now?” Caleb asks.

Nott looks down at her hands in her lap, twisting over and over each other in an anxious rhythm. “It’s not  _ all  _ I want.”

Caleb puts a finger under her chin and gently tilts her head up so that she has to look him in the eye. “What do you want? What are you afraid of?”

She almost laughs, because the answer to both questions is the same. “You.”

Caleb’s face crumples. “You are afraid of me?”

“No.” Nott reaches out and rests her hand on his cheek. “No, Caleb, I could never be afraid of you. I’m afraid... of how I feel? About you?”

“Oh,” Caleb says very quietly. Nott watches his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. 

“I know I’ve been putting this off. And every time I think about why, I keep coming back to you. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to miss my chance to…” she trails off, sighs, and says, “Just stop me if I do something you don’t want.”

She leans up and kisses him. Caleb is frozen for a moment, in that way he gets when he’s trying to process new information. And then he’s kissing her back. 

His hands come up and cradle her at the nape of her neck and the small of her back, pulling her in closer. Her hands tangle in his hair. She’s overly conscious of her teeth, but she darts her tongue out to lick at the seam of his lips, and that’s when Caleb gasps and pulls away from her. 

“Nott, we cannot do this.” He’s drawing in deep, panting breaths. “You are  _ married _ .”

“Technically,  _ Veth _ is married,” Nott tries. 

Caleb is unmoved by her attempt at levity. “And tomorrow Veth will have to deal with the consequences of Nott’s actions. I will deliver her back to her adoring husband and I will not be able to look him in the eye!”

“Let me worry about Yeza,” Nott says. She reaches out and puts a tentative hand on his knee. “Look, Caleb, if this isn’t something you want, then I don’t want it either. But if you’re stopping for my sake, don’t. I think you and I have both gotten very good at denying ourselves the things we want. But I’m not doing that anymore. I want this. I want  _ you _ .”

“You have a husband who loves you,” Caleb’s voice is almost pleading at this point.

“That’s true,” Nott agrees, “but you loved me even when you thought I was a monster.”

Caleb looks stricken, like she sucker-punched him, and for a moment Nott thinks that she shouldn’t have said  _ love _ . But then Caleb is reaching out, hands on either side of her face, and his voice is rough but his touch is gentle when he says, “I have  _ never _ thought you were a monster.” And then he’s kissing her.

He kisses her, fierce and desperate, like he can impress the truth of his feelings into her skin with his mouth. He kisses across her cheek, and down her jaw, and rests his forehead at the place where her neck meets her shoulder, taking deep, heaving breaths. His hands flutter from her shoulders to her hips to her hair, unsure of where to land. He presses his face against her skin and whispers, “I have dreamed of this.” It’s like he doesn’t mind the sharp angles of her, bones too close to the surface, the roughness of her skin. Everything she hates about this body, he touches with gentle reverence. She’s never felt more present in this body, achingly aware of every place their bodies are touching. It makes her want to crawl out of her skin. It makes her want to eat him alive.

He mouths along her collarbone, pushing her shirt out of the way as he goes, and she gasps out, “Caleb, please!” not even sure what she’s asking for at this point.

He pulls back, just to arms’ length, hands still on her shoulders, and looks into her eyes, face serious.

“Nott, Veth, if we do this, I will not want to give you up. I will not want to give you back to him.”

“We’ll work something out,” she says, and sticks her hand in his pants.

She wraps her hand around him, hot and heavy and half-hard already, quickly filling at her touch. Caleb lets out a high-pitched whine that shoots through Nott’s body like lightning. Caleb’s eyes fall shut and his mouth falls open. His fists press against his thighs, and every breath sounds like it’s punched out of him. His hips make little abortive movements, like he’s trying not to thrust into Nott’s grip but can’t quite help it.

“Stop,” Caleb gasps, and Nott pulls back immediately. She was so mesmerized by Caleb’s face that she stopped paying attention to her claws.  _ Stupid. _

“Did I hurt you?”

“ _ Nein, nein, alles gut _ . I just need…” 

Nott watches Caleb, brow still furrowed in concern, as he reaches out and wraps a hand around her wrist. His face is flaming, but he doesn’t break eye contact as he pulls her hand up to his mouth and licks a sloppy, wet stripe across her palm. Nott can’t hold back a moan at that, and wraps her hand around his cock again. The saliva makes the slide just a little bit smoother, and it’s  _ so good _ . Caleb is moaning with every stroke now, thrusting up to meet her hand, and Nott is incandescent.

Is it this body that’s made her so hungry, so greedy? With her free hand, she shoves at his shoulder, and he goes willingly, sprawling on the bed before her. His knees bracket her, his hands clutching at her shoulders as she jerks him faster. She surges in time, hips stuttering against nothing, desperate to touch. Maybe it’s just that it’s been five years since anyone touched her. Maybe it’s just Caleb, igniting her, burning her up from the inside out. 

She shoves his pants down around his thighs and moves to straddle him, then pauses, brought up short. 

“Maybe we didn’t think this through.”

Caleb looks up at her through lust-hazed eyes. “You are having second thoughts  _ now _ ?” he gasps.

Nott laughs. “No, it’s just. You’re a lot bigger than I am.”

Caleb throws an arm over his face and chuckles.

“Don’t get cute,” Nott says tartly. “I’m sure it’s just average for a human. Probably even below average.”

Caleb is shaking with laughter now.

“You know, I could just go, if you’re not interested,” she says. 

Caleb sits up and says, “I’m sure we can work something out.” He grins at her, and then she’s being lifted into the air and deposited at the head of the bed. Caleb lies down on his belly and props his chin on his hands, looking up at her from beneath lowered lashes. She’s not sure when Caleb Widogast learned how to be  _ sultry _ , but she gets the message and scrambles out of her clothes.

He kisses her ankle bone, and she squirms, ticklish, barely managing not to kick him in the face. He anchors her with a hand on her ankle and then slowly works his way up the inside of her leg, alternating sloppy kisses and sucking bruises. By the time he makes it to the crease where her leg meets her body, she’s about ready to scream. He presses his face there for a moment, so close but not quite where she needs him, and breathes in deep through his nose. A shudder runs through her whole body. 

He rests his chin on her hip bone and looks up at her face. She’s not sure what he sees there – she feels pretty slack-jawed at the moment – but apparently it’s satisfactory, because he smiles. It’s such a soft, gentle expression, so at odds with his normal seriousness, but growing more and more common. The first time she had ever seen Caleb smile, a week or so after they had met, was at some joke she told, and he had looked so startled by his own smile, like he’d forgotten that was something he could do. He’d ducked his head to hide it, but she’d caught it anyway, and she thinks she might have fallen in love with him a little bit at that moment.

Now his smile is wider, free and open, almost a dare. She smiles back at him, and she isn’t even thinking about how it shows her fangs, and she loves him so much she feels like her heart might explode. She reaches down and tucks a strand of his hair behind his ear, and he leans into it, cat-like. He nuzzles against her hand for a moment, then presses a kiss to the center of her palm. Then he ducks his head, and Nott stops breathing.

The first touch of his tongue against her is a lightning strike; her whole body jolts with it. And as he moves lower, presses deeper, grows less cautious, it rolls across her like thunderclouds. Beneath Caleb’s mouth and hands, she is coming to life, like a droughted land in a sudden storm, discovering that what seemed dead was merely hibernating. He licks into her, sucks her clit into his mouth, moans deep in his throat like he’s getting as much pleasure out of this as she is. She wouldn’t be surprised if she were transforming right now under his touch, spells and rituals be damned; she feels so good, and real, and right.

Her abs begin to clench, her toes to curl, and she gasps out his name. Caleb redoubles his efforts, lapping at her with single-minded fervor. His hands are clutching at her thighs hard enough to bruise. She comes with something like a prayer on her lips.

She drifts for a timeless moment, hazy and boneless with pleasure. When she finally manages to drag open her heavy eyelids, Caleb is kneeling above her. Even in the low light, she can see the flush on his cheeks and chest, the slick shine all over his chin, the way his pupils are swallowing the irises. He is staring down at her and slowly tugging at his cock. One, two, three, four pulls and he’s gone, spurting hot all over his hand. A little bit of his come lands on her stomach, and she’s vaguely disappointed that it wasn’t more.

“What if I wanted to do that?” She’s too blissed out to really sound petulant. 

Caleb huffs out a chuckle. “Next time,  _ liebling _ .”

He wipes his hand on the sheet and lies down next to her, curling around her. He pillows his head on her shoulder, and she wraps her arm around him, strokes his hair. She thinks of all the times they’ve slept in the same bed, those many nights curled up in the hollow behind his knees. This – with his arm across her body, and his knees tucked up beneath her feet, and his mouth pressing half-formed kisses into her shoulder – is infinitely better.

She thinks about tomorrow, and all her fears.  _ Next time _ . She knows who she is and what she wants, and she’s not going to stop wanting this. And Caleb – dear, sweet, brilliant, enthusiastic, fierce Caleb – isn’t going away. She presses a kiss to the top of his head and closes her eyes, knowing that he’ll still be there when she wakes up tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after that, for as long as she wants him there. And with that knowledge, there’s nothing to fear from tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. They’ll work something out. Together.

**Author's Note:**

> Who would have thought my first ever smut would be heterosexual? However, first straight smut = mostly just cunnilingus? Entirely predictable.


End file.
